by Low, Robert
For you’ll do the like to-morrow,
W.G.
And indeed he did. He made five more centuries in 1895, to give him nine for the season, his best since 1871, when he compiled his record of ten. Three of them were at Lord’s. For MCC v Kent, he made a careful 125 on a difficult wicket. He followed that with 101 not out against I Zingari, in that club’s jubilee match against Gentlemen of England, which won the game for the Gentlemen, who had been set 172 to win. Thanks to W.G., they did so by ten wickets. And to cap his marvellous Indian summer, he made his customary century for the Gentlemen v Players, though oddly enough it was his first at headquarters in that fixture since that other golden summer of 1876. His only other century for Gloucestershire in 1895 was 119 against Nottinghamshire at Trent Bridge and he rounded off his season with 104 for South v North at Hastings.
His aggregate was a magnificent 2,346, at an average of 51, comparing very favourably with his figures of 1876 earlier (2,622 and 62.42). He picked up only sixteen wickets, but only the brilliant newcomer Archie MacLaren, of Lancashire, headed him in the batting averages, thanks largely to his world record innings of 424 against Somerset at Taunton which finally eclipsed W.G.’s 344, also made in 1876. For the Champion, it was almost as if the twenty intervening years had never happened. Small wonder that the Cricket Field should summarise the year thus:
For a time nothing was heard of but the powers of Mr Grace. In the church and the music hall reference was made, though in different ways, to the example he set to the youth of the world, and it is not too much to say that, for the time being, the affairs of the world at large had to take a second place.
There was a footnote to W.G.’s epic year. In a letter of 23 September, he wrote:
I played nearly all the year with the same bat for which I have already been offered £20 but money won’t purchase it although I did tell a gentleman at The Oval that he could have it for £1,000.
Imagine the price it would fetch nowadays.
It would have been asking a great deal of W.G. to equal his achievements of 1895, but in 1896 he continued in much the same vein, recording his first triple century (301 for Gloucestershire v Sussex at Bristol) since 1876, and fifth double century (243 not out, against the luckless Sussex bowlers again, for his county at Brighton). The double century came first, in the by now traditional fixture between the two counties starting on Whit Monday. W.G.’s 243 was made out of a total of 463. The return match, starting at Ashley Down on the August bank holiday, attracted a huge crowd, eager to see W.G. and Ranji, the two finest batsmen of the era, pitted against each other. W.G. had picked W.G. junior to open the batting with him, but all he succeeded in doing was to emphasise the yawning gap in class between them. His bespectacled son was soon out for one, while he himself made precisely 300 more. By the end of the first day he had made 195 in brilliant fashion, and was pursued off the pitch by the jubilant crowd. Next day he was ninth out for the third highest score of his career, another monument to his astonishing skill, patience and sheer physical strength. Sussex were beaten by an innings and 123 runs.
Gloucestershire saw the best of him that summer. He also made centuries against Somerset (186 at Taunton) and Lancashire (102 not out at Bristol), and good scores against Yorkshire (at Bristol) and Kent (at Gravesend and Cheltenham). But it wasn’t all plain sailing. Grace was an unwitting and unwilling participant in the most controversial incident of the year, indeed of the decade – the professional strike before the third Test Match against the visiting Australians at The Oval, which left a bitter taste for years. Perhaps it was a hangover from W.G.’s cash windfall of the previous summer. That had served to remind professional cricketers that the only man making big money from the game was ostensibly an amateur. The fee for playing for England was £10 but the professionals suspected that Grace was receiving a lot more than that, despite his amateur status.
On the eve of the match, five of the England team – Gunn, Lohmann, Hayward, Abel and Richardson – demanded double the previous fee or they would refuse to play. It was widely reported that Grace’s fees and expenses were the main cause of their resentment. Four of the protesters were on the Surrey staff and the Surrey committee, in charge of the match, stood firm. Faced with this attitude, three of the strikers backed down on the morning of the match and were allowed to play. But Lohmann and Gunn stuck to their guns, and the match went ahead without them. So disturbed was the Surrey club at the incident that it issued a statement:
The Committee of the Surrey County Cricket Club have observed paragraphs in the Press respecting amounts alleged to be paid, or promised to Dr W.G. Grace for playing in the match England v Australia. The Committee desire to give the statements contained in the paragraphs the most unqualified contradiction. During many years, on the occasions of Dr W.G. Grace playing at The Oval, at the request of the Surrey County Committee, in the matches Gentlemen v Players and England v Australia, Dr Grace has received the sum of £10 a match to cover his expenses in coming to and remaining in London during the three days. Beyond this amount Dr Grace has not received, directly or indirectly, one farthing for playing in a match at The Oval.
W.G. himself was deeply angered by his team-mates’ action, referring later to ‘many irritating statements of an absolutely false character … made with regard to prominent amateur cricketers’, and described the strikers’ attitude as ‘dictatorial’, an odd word to use in the circumstances. As usual, there was right on both sides: W.G. undoubtedly earned more money from the game than any professional, but he was still the game’s greatest attraction, capable of putting thousands on the gate for a mere county game in which he was playing. The professionals were poorly paid and badly looked after by the sport. None of them received national testimonials from newspapers although the takings from their benefit matches had improved. One or two of the richer counties had started paying their professionals a small weekly stipend over the winter months but most of them got nothing at all from the game out of season. But Grace could reasonably argue that he did more than any other cricketer to support his professional colleagues’ benefits. He would go anywhere to help them, and pull in large numbers of spectators who would add vital extra income for the beneficiaries.
The editor of Wisden, Sydney Pardon, sat on the fence when he pondered the issue after the season had ended. ‘The earnings of the players have certainly not risen in proportion to the immensely increased popularity of cricket during the last twenty years,’ he wrote, ‘but to represent the average professional as an ill-treated or down-trodden individual is, I think, a gross exaggeration.’ As for ‘the thorny question of amateurs’ expenses’, no doubt there were ‘some abuses’, but a distinguished county captain had assured him that he knew of ‘not more than half-a-dozen men, playing as amateurs, who make anything out of the game’. He concluded: ‘Mr W.G. Grace’s position has for years, as everyone knows, been an anomalous one but “nice customs curtsey to great kings” and the work he has done in popularising cricket outweighs a hundredfold every other consideration.’
The strike was an unfortunate climax to a gripping Test series in which W.G. was once again England’s captain. Like England, Australia had a highly promising new generation of players, and in the first Test at Lord’s one of them produced what was perhaps the most famous single delivery W.G. faced in his long career. Ernest ‘Jonah’ Jones was a twenty-seven-year-old miner from South Australia on his first tour of England, a stocky right-arm fast bowler who could extract fearsome bounce, and proceeded to do so against W.G. with a snorter which reared up, brushed the great man’s beard (and the top of his bat handle), soared over the wicket-keeper’s head and raced to the sightscreen for 4. Jones followed through and arrived level with Grace, who was variously reported as saying, ‘Whatever are ye at?’ and ‘What do you think you’re at, Jonah?’ Jones was said to have replied sheepishly: ‘Sorry, Doctor, she slipped.’
Grace was visibly shaken by the ball and took some time to recover his composure while the e
xcited crowd buzzed. However, there was nothing W.G. liked better than demonstrating to a touted young player that he was still capable of a thing or two. He settled down and saw Jones off, with a dogged 66. ‘The first ball I sent whizzing through his whiskers,’ said Jones afterwards. ‘After that, he kept hitting me off his blinkin’ ear-’ole for four.’ England won the match by seven wickets.
The Australians squared the series by winning the second Test, at Old Trafford, despite a brilliant 154 by the star of the summer, Ranjitsinhji, who with 2,780 runs went on to beat by 61 W.G.’s record aggregate for a season, in 1871.
One incident at Old Trafford showed Grace at his shrewdest as captain. His new wicket-keeper, ‘Dick’ Lilley, occasionally turned his arm over and had taken 6–46 for Warwickshire against Derbyshire the previous week. Looking for someone to break a useful stand between Hill and Trott, Grace summoned Lilley who took off the gloves and pads and tried his arm. Although he was inaccurate and expensive, Grace kept him on and was rewarded when Trott edged a catch to Jack Brown, the temporary keeper. His object achieved, Grace instantly removed Lilley from the attack with the words, ‘I shan’t want you to bowl again. You must have been bowling with your wrong arm.’ Lilley’s first Test wicket was to be his last.
It was Grace’s captaincy that was the deciding factor in England’s winning the decider at The Oval, though the visitors gained a measure of revenge against Gloucestershire, dismissing the county at Cheltenham for only 17 (their lowest score ever), of which Grace made 9.
The side which the Gentlemen put out against the Players in 1896 is widely regarded as the strongest ever, and they duly did the ‘double’ over the Players at The Oval and Lord’s. W.G made half-centuries in both matches, both innings playing a crucial part in his side’s victory. At Lord’s he got the Gentlemen, chasing 224 on a difficult wicket, off to a brisk start with 54 after being missed at short leg off the first ball he faced. The young bloods, Jackson and Ranji, finished off the job.
There was a famous confontation between W.G. and MacLaren at Old Trafford that summer. MacLaren went back to play the ball, but before setting off for a run trod on his wicket when he had scored 2. There was no appeal from the Gloucestershire fielders, but when MacLaren made no move to leave the crease W.G. exclaimed, ‘What? Ain’t you going, Archie?’ MacLaren replied that he wasn’t, as he believed he had broken his wicket after completing his shot. W.G. then appealed to the umpire, William Shrewsbury, brother of Arthur, who sided with MacLaren. W.G. was incredulous and then extremely angry, and could not put the incident out of his mind for the rest of the match, muttering furiously to himself out in the field, as was his custom when things went against him.
Ranji may have dominated the season, but Grace still topped the 2,000 mark, totalling 2,135 at 42.70 to finish fifth in the averages. He also took fifty-two wickets, his best haul for five years.
W.G. still had two more seasons at the top of the first-class game, which took him, incredibly, through to his fiftieth birthday in 1898. After that there was a slow but inevitable decline.
His performances in 1897 were steady after an odd start to the season, which had Wisden baffled. As if determined to show his critics he still had all the energy of a man half his age, Grace’s first few innings were marked by an impetuosity which was all the stranger from a player whose patience was a byword. ‘So long did he continue to play in a manner quite foreign to his normal methods as to create a feeling of dismay,’ remarked cricket’s bible. However, normal service was resumed with 66 for the Gentlemen against a strong Players’ attack at Lord’s which reduced the brilliant new generation of amateurs to impotence, but not the Old Man.
Nottinghamshire felt the full weight of his bat in both their matches against Gloucestershire. He made 126 at Trent Bridge and an even better 131 in the return at Bristol, and hit a third county championship century of the summer (116 also at Bristol) against Sussex. His only other century (113 at Bristol again) was perhaps fortunate to be categorised as first-class, for it was made for Gloucestershire against the third Philadelphian touring team from the United States who, it rapidly became apparent, were out of their depth against the MCC, county and university sides against whom they were pitted. Their batting was weak (Grace took 7–91 against them) but their bowling was a litttle stronger – they had the distinction of dismissing the hitherto rampant Ranji for a golden duck.
Grace compiled a satisfactory 1,532 runs at 39.28 – only six batsmen scored more – to finish tenth in the national averages. He also took fifty-six wickets, four more than in 1896, at 22.17.
15 · A BIRTHDAY TREAT TO REMEMBER
IN the autumn of 1897 the Sportsman had an idea. On 18 July 1898, W.G. would celebrate his fiftieth birthday. What better way of celebrating it than by postponing the start of the Gentlemen v Players at Lord’s, the fixture with which Grace was uniquely associated, from the second week of July to the great day itself? The proposal quickly won support. When the county cricket secretaries gathered in December for their annual meeting they agreed unanimously that the match should begin on Monday 18 July. Furthermore, there would be no other first-class fixtures arranged for that period so that the strongest possible teams could be selected from the amateur and professional ranks. The scale and nature of the tribute were unprecedented, and showed, if proof were needed, the reverence and respect in which Grace was held by his peers.
There was a lot of cricket to be played in 1898 before the great game. W.G. was in reasonable but by no means spectacular form in the early part of the season, warming up with 146 not out in a practice match against twenty-two County Colts, and 65 for MCC against Sussex at Lord’s. With less than a fortnight to go to his Jubilee game, he took his Gloucestershire team to Leyton for what turned out to be an epic encounter with Essex. It was the first time Gloucestershire had played there, and only W.G.’s second visit. His face was unfamiliar to at least one local, the policeman on duty at the pavilion entrance, who at first refused him admittance because he did not have a member’s ticket (clearly a role model for generations of Lord’s gatemen ever since). It was also a head-to-head confrontation between W.G., at forty-nine the doyen of English batsmen, and the fearsome Charles Kortright, at twenty-seven the finest fast bowler of the younger generation. As amateurs, they were due to play together for the Gentlemen at Lord’s. At Leyton, however, there was no love lost between the pair. The elder man claimed all the early honours. ‘It was “W.G.’s” day with a vengeance,’ reported the Sportsman, ‘as besides taking seven wickets for 44 runs, the cricketer of this or any other age flogged the Essex bowling to the extent of one hundred and twenty six runs.’ On what was generally reckoned to one of the country’s plumbest batting wickets, W.G. bamboozled the powerful Essex batting line-up, who had made 497–5 against Derbyshire in their previous match. ‘Deceiving the batsmen with the flight of the ball, “W.G.” stuck up the opposition in a manner almost unaccountable, and one and another of the team returned to the pavilion in a silence that was almost depressing.’
His victims included Percy Perrin, with what almost everyone else on the field thought was a caught and bowled taken on the bounce, and Kortright, no mean batsmen, leg before. Essex were all out for 128 by 2 p.m., and had not Walter Mead indulged in some late hitting (including three mighty leg-side blows off Grace), W.G.’s figures would have been even more remarkable. It was widely felt that the young Essex batsmen, who had never faced him before, were simply bamboozled by him. The journalist W.A. Bettesworth commented on this phenomenon later in the month:
When men had once become accustomed to his bowling he was often pretty severely treated, but he was always likely to break up a partnership. To a man who has never been opposed to him he is almost invariably fatal, however good he may be, and old cricketers were not at all surprised when the Essex men could make neither head nor tail of him.
Kortright did not take this blow to his county’s pride lying down. When Gloucestershire batted, bowling at his fastest and fiercest
, he pitched the ball persistently short, and several times rapped Grace painfully on the hands. After one delivery, W.G. pointedly walked half-way down the pitch and vigorously patted it with his bat, which caused some amusement, though not presumably to Kortright. Mixing gritty defence with judicious attack, W.G. played an innings which evoked his greatest years, reaching his century out of 153, and his total of 126 out of 203. He was finally out to a tired shot, not surprising when one thinks of what he had acomplished in less than a day’s cricket, skying an attempted pull straight up in the air to be caught by wicket-keeper Russell.
He was cheered all the way back to the pavilion and several men ran on to the field to congratulate him. Kortright took five wickets but not the one that mattered. Many years later, he told John Arlott: ‘The Old Man made me look as simple as dirt. He wasn’t attempting to hit the ball with his bat outside the off-stump, but was punching it – punching it – with his thick felt gloves through the slips, and I was bowling fairly fast then … Everyone was much surprised at it.’
In Gloucestershire’s second innings, when they needed only 148 to win, Kortright was even more lethal. Jessop later recalled:
Here we had the fastest bowler in the world bowling with a determination which I never saw exceeded. Even W.G. during the hour and a half in which he batted … was constantly at fault in his timing, once so much as to receive one of Kortright’s fastest deliveries in the stomach. The bruise … was quite the most extraordinary extravasation of blood that I have ever witnessed. The seam of the ball was quite clear, and you could almost see the maker’s name impinged on the flesh. The horrid thud of the impact could be distinctly heard in the pavilion.
As well as demonstrating his durability and courage, Grace was the beneficiary of further dubious umpiring decisions. When he had made only six, he appeared to be caught and bowled. It seemed so clearly out that, at first, no one bothered to appeal. When W.G., who thought it was a bump ball, stood his ground, Mead appealed and the umpire, George Burton, gave him out. W.G. roared, ‘What, George?’ and Burton changed his mind. In W.G.’s defence, Burton’s view was obscured by the bowler and Cyril Sewell, the other batsman, thought W.G. was correct.